Attack on Titan Howl of Freedom review: remember the titans?
DeNA Mobage has released an action-strategy game based on the anime Attack on Titan, and I can’t put it down. Howl of Freedom perfectly combines the strategy genre with the anime world and makes for one addictive mobile game.
For those who haven’t seen the anime, titans, massive humanoid creatures that can reach heights of up to fifteen meters have infested the land, and they devour every moving human they can get their hands on. In the anime, these titans attack the cities, and the people fight back. In Howl of Freedom, you play as someone who has been exiled away from the walled cities and have joined a small village. Here, the people are out in the open and in constant danger of titan or bandit attacks. It is up to you to build the city’s defense, increase its mining output, and of course, destroy your enemies.
Although it may not be much of a story, Howl of Freedom doesn’t need an epic tale for it to be fun. There is a brief introduction in Japanese and a tutorial in poorly-translated English, but overall the game and the story are left largely in your hands.
To build up the city’s defenses, you will need to obtain lots and lots of black bamboo. Never heard of black bamboo, you say? Well let me tell you: this stuff is amazing. Black bamboo is some of the most resistant material you will ever see, and on top of that, also repairs itself if damaged. Your cannon took some damage during an attack? No problem. It will be as good as new in no time.
Black bamboo is a wonderful material, but you have to build furnaces and mines for it to be of any use. A furnace is first needed to produce black bamboo, after which it can be used to build up defensive weapons and other structures for your town. However this furnace produces the material at an alarmingly slow rate, and you will have to use resources to improve the building and speed up its production of black bamboo.
Resource management doesn’t end there in Howl of Freedom. On top of black bamboo, you will have to mine frozen gas. Frozen gas can be used for certain upgrades for your village buildings, but even more important is its use in drilling titans.
Now I have no idea why you would “drill” for titan, nor do I fully understand how you could possibly control these beasts, but what I do understand is that they make incredible weapons. One of the major components of Howl of Freedom is raiding and pillaging neighboring settlements. Sure, you could simply stay inside your little village forever, mining small amounts of black bamboo and frozen gas at a time, but taking it from others is far quicker. Your mines can’t produce in an hour what you can take in a minute. So build up your titan army and have them desolate the lands.
Attack on Titan Howl of Freedom does feature characters from the show, but very rarely do they make any sort of appearance. The main pull for the game comes from the use of the titans. As you build up your drill, you are able to recruit more and more powerful titans that are straight out of the anime.
The actual battle sequences are somewhat of a letdown. You control who you send out and when you send them, but once the titans are on the field, things are out of your hands. In combat, the titans will attack what is closest to them, until the object is either destroyed or the titan is dead. On most occasions, this minimalist approach works. However, when attacking a city that attacks back, it would be nice to be able to direct the titans to other safer and more efficient areas. Instead what happens is the titans will continuously attack a building while being shot at repeatedly by a nearby cannon. This is when it gets frustrating.
Honestly though, that might just be my only complaint. Howl of Freedom is a well polished game that controls nicely, loads quickly, and just plays beautifully. Everything from the look to the sound has been carefully designed to make one spectacular experience. Whether you are a fan of the anime series, or simply just enjoy these types of strategy games, you are sure to love Attack on Titan Howl of Freedom.
Unfortunately Howl of Freedom is only available in the Japanese App Store or Google Play, but seeing how the game already has an English translation we expect it won’t be long until an international release.
The post Attack on Titan Howl of Freedom review: remember the titans? appeared first on Games in Asia.
The post Attack on Titan Howl of Freedom review: remember the titans? appeared first on Games in Asia.
